I had a surreal experience last night involving a dark hallway, a student in his underwear, a padlocked door and a naked janitor.

I still can’t get the Internet in my apartment, so I have to go to my campus office every time I want to post an entry on my blog. As I was working late at night, a janitor opened my office door and gestured that it was time to leave. Since he spoke no English and my Chinese consists of about a dozen words and phrases, I pantomimed my intention to leave soon. He seemed satisfied and walked away.

When I left my office about 25 minutes later at 10:15 p.m., the entire building was pitch black. I felt my way down the hall like a blind man and found the stairwell, then walked down three flights to the ground floor. But when I finally reached the swinging glass front doors, they were locked. A metal band was wrapped around the door handles and fastened with a padlock. I managed to slightly pry one door open with my hands, but the gap was too narrow for me to fit through. At that point, I thought I would be spending the night in my office.

As I walked back toward the stairs, I heard music coming from one of the rooms. (The building is a combination of classrooms and offices.)  I knocked on the door and, after a minute or two, a young man appeared wearing nothing but his underwear. I pointed toward the front entrance and tried to convey my desire to leave the building. He seemed to understand. He put on a pair of pants and escorted me to what turned out to be the janitor’s room. He knocked on the door and a stark naked old man answered. He was bleary-eyed with a two-day stubble, so it appeared we had woken him up. Speaking in Chinese, the young man told the janitor that I needed to get out of the building. The old man retrieved a set of keys and, still in his birthday suit, guided me to a side door. He opened it and, with great relief, I walked out and entered the campus courtyard. The old man followed me and stood naked in front of the building, smiling at the dumb American who managed to get himself locked in his own office.

I assumed the young man was a student, but I couldn’t figure out why he was sleeping overnight in a classroom or office. The following morning, I asked several Chinese grad students if they had an explanation. They said that because their dorms have no air conditioning, they sometimes sleep in their air-conditioned offices during summer vacation. (Grad students share an office where they each have a cubicle.) But, since vacation is over and school has started, they didn’t know why the young man was sleeping in the building.

As I’ve quickly learned, many things in China are inscrutable.